A couple of stray clouds are the only other things up here at 4,500 feet besides me.

A dam on the Shenandoah Rover down near Front Royal.

I was going to fly an hour down the valley to Shenandoah Valley Regional in Weyers Cave, Virginia, but there was a haze layer over the mountains to the south. I could have made the flight, but visibility would have been poor. So I'll save that one for another day. Instead, I just got some maneuver practice in. Turns, stalls...slow flight.

Full flaps, max power, pitched up. Two minutes of keeping it under 45 knots indicated, including a 360-degree turn. Lots of stall horn but no stall, This plane slows well.

Nah. I snagged my Choiceasaurus from a hotel back in the 1980s when I was on a motorcycle road trip. They had a basket of them in the lobby and I helped myself, even though I wasn't a paying guest of the hotel--I'd just snuck in to use the pool for a bit.

Since then, the little guy has traveled with me on about all of my road trips, and when I'm not driving paces, he lives in the plane. That little dinosaur has seen a lot of America and really racked up some miles.

Oh, it does. It's so easy not to practice the skills we get tested on every two years, and some of them actually have a purpose. I always practice my "go around" procedure too after the one time I actually had to execute a go-around for real and slapped the flaps full up with one smack of the switch. Knew it was a mistake as soon as I'd done it, but too late to correct it. Fortunately I was well below gross weight and got away with it...barely. Valuable lessons learned that day and now these things get practiced.

Don't be disappointed if some random dude on the ground is flipping you off.....I do it to all of the birds that fly over the house. Ever since the piss filled water bottle ended up in my back yard, I'm kinda unhappy about flyovers.